Daily Archives: June 3, 2024

On April 17, a column of Russian tanks and trucks passed through a series of dusty Azerbaijani towns as they drove away from Nagorno-Karabakh, the highland territory at the heart of the South Caucasus that Azerbaijan and Armenia had fought over for more than three decades. Since 2020, Russian peacekeepers had maintained a presence there. Now, the Russian flag that flew over the regions military base was being hauled down.

Although it caught many by surprise, the Russian departure further consolidated a power shift that began in late September 2023, when Azerbaijan seized the territory and, almost overnight, forced the mass exodus of some 100,000 Karabakh Armenianswhile Russian forces stood by. Azerbaijan, an authoritarian country that shares a border with Russia on the Caspian Sea, has emerged as a power player, with significant oil and gas resources, a strong military, and lucrative ties to both Russia and the West.

Meanwhile, the regions other two countries, Armenia and Georgia, have been experiencing tectonic shifts of their own. In the months since Azerbaijans takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, a traditional ally of Russia, has swung ever more firmly toward the West. The ruling party in Georgia is breaking with three decades of close relations with Europe and the United States and seems intent on emulating its authoritarian neighbors. In May, the Georgian parliament passed a controversial law to crack down on foreign influence over nongovernmental organizationsa law that derives inspiration from Russian legislation and sends Moscow a signal that it has a dependable partner on its southern border.

Obscured in this reordering of the South Caucasus are the complex motives of Russia itself. The regionknown to Russians as the Transcaucasushas held fluctuating strategic significance over the centuries. The imperial touch was not as heavy there as in other parts of the Russian Empire or Soviet Union. Following the end of the Soviet Union, Moscow tried to keep its leverage through manipulation of the local ethnoterritorial conflicts there, maintaining as many troops on the ground as it could.

But the war in Ukraine and the Western sanctions regime has changed that calculus. By deciding to remove troops from Azerbaijan, the Kremlin is acknowledging that economic security in the South Caucasusfor now at leastis more important than the hard variety. Russia badly needs business partners and sanctions-busting trade routes in the south. And at a time when it is increasingly squeezed by the West, it also sees the region as offering a coveted new land axis to Iran.

At first blush, the unilateral Russian withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh this spring was puzzling. For much of the past three decades, Azerbaijanis and Armenians have fought over the territory, which is situated within Azerbaijan but has had a majority ethnic Armenian population. In 2020, Azerbaijan reversed territorial losses it had suffered in the 1990s and would have captured Nagorno-Karabakh, as well, were it not for Russias last-minute introduction of a peacekeeping force, mandated to protect the local Armenian population. Those peacekeepers stood by, however, as Azerbaijan marched into Karabakh last September. Still, they had a mandate to stay on until 2025. As well as projecting Russian power in the region, they could also have facilitated the return of some Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Of course, for Russia, the 2,000 men and 400 armored vehicles that were transferred out of the territory provide welcome reinforcements for its war in Ukraine. But that was not the whole story. By deciding to leave the region, Russia handed Azerbaijan a triumph, allowing its military to take unfettered control of the long-contested territory. For most Armenians, it was a fresh confirmation of Russias abandonment. Almost immediately, observers speculated that some kind of deal had been struck between Russia and Azerbaijan.

As the largest and wealthiest of the three South Caucasus countries, Azerbaijan has profited most from Russias shift. It is a player in East-West energy politics, providing oil and gas that is carried by two pipelines through Georgia and its close ally Turkey to European and international markets. Sharing a border with Iran, it also serves as a north-south gateway between Moscow and the Middle East. It helps that the Azerbaijani regimein contrast to Armenias democratic governmentis built in the same autocratic mold as Russias. Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijans longtime strongman president, has even deeper roots in the Soviet nomenklatura than does Russian President Vladimir Putin: his father was Heydar Aliyev, a veteran Soviet power broker who was also his predecessor as the leader of postindependence Azerbaijan, running the country from 1993 to 2003. The younger Aliyev and Putin also know how to do business together, in a relationship built more around personal connection and leadership style than on institutional ties.

Relations were not always so good. In tsarist and Soviet times, Moscow took a more overtly colonial approach toward the Muslim population of Azerbaijan, giving Russian endings to surnames and imposing the Cyrillic script on the Azeri language. Azerbaijanis still resent the bloody crackdown in 1990, when, during the last days of the Soviet Union Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sent troops into Baku to suppress the Azerbaijani Popular Front Party, killing dozens of civilians. During much of the long-running Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Moscow gave more support to the Armenians.

After the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, however, Russia began a new strategic tilt toward Azerbaijan. The withdrawal of peacekeepers this spring looks like the key component of a full Baku-Moscow entente. Just five days after the Russian peacekeepers left, Aliyev traveled to Moscow, where he discussed enhanced north-south connections between the two countries. After the talks, Russian Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev said that Azerbaijan was upgrading its railway infrastructure to more than double its cargo capacityand allow for much more trade with Russia.

For Moscow, this is all part of a race with the West to create new trade routes to compensate for the economic rupture caused by the war in Ukraine. Since the war started, Western governments and companies have been trying to upgrade the so-called Middle Corridor, the route that carries cargo from western China and Central Asia to Europe via the Caspian Sea and the South Caucasusthereby bypassing Russia. For its part, Russia has been trying to expand its own connections to the Middle East and India via both Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan, thanks to its favorable geographical position and nonaligned status, has been able to play both sides. It is a central country in the Middle Corridor. It is increasing gas exports to the EU, after a deal with the European Commission in 2022. But it is also ideally positioned to trade with Russian energy exporters, too. In a report released in March, the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies suggested that Azerbaijan, working with its close ally Turkey, could help create a hub for Russian gas to reach foreign markets without sanction. And because of Azerbaijans growing status as the regional power broker, it also could enable Russia to realize its aims of building stronger connections to Iran.

A key part of Russias shifting ambitions in the South Caucasus is to rebuild overland transport routes to Iran. The most attractive route is the one that Azerbaijan calls the Zangezur Corridor, a projected road and rail link through southern Armenia that would connect Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani exclave that borders both Iran and Turkey. By reopening the 27-mile route, Moscow would have a direct rail connection to Tehran, which has become an important arms supplier to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.

In fact, this north-south axis would effectively revive what was known as the Persian Corridor during World War IIa road-and-rail route running north from Iran through Azerbaijan to Russia that supplied no less than half the lend-lease aid that the United States provided the Soviet Union during the conflict. By a strange twist of fate, this same axis is now vital to Moscow in its current struggle against the United States and the West.

Back in November 2020, the Russians thought they had a deal to get this route open when Putin, Aliyev, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a trilateral agreement that formally halted that years conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and introduced the Russian peacekeeping force. The pact included a provision calling for the unblocking of all economic and transport links in the region, and it specifically mentioned the route to Nakhichevan across Armenia. Moreover, it also stated that control over this route would be in the hands of Russias Federal Security Service, or the FSB.

Since then, the corridor has remained closed because Armenia and Azerbaijan could not agree on the terms of its operation. Yet Russias insistence that its security forces should be in control has remained constant. On his return from Moscow in April, Aliyev also alluded to this, telling an international audience that the 2020 agreement (whose other provisions are all now redundant) must be respected. Opening the corridor, then, may be the essence of the new deal between Azerbaijan and Russia: in return for Russia pulling its forces out of Karabakha step that handed the Azerbaijani leadership a major domestic victoryAzerbaijan may acquiesce to Russian security control over the planned route across southern Armenia.

If such a plan is carried out, it would amount to a coordinated Azerbaijani-Russian takeover of Armenias southern bordera nightmare for both Armenia and the West. The Armenians would lose control of a strategically vital border region. The United States and its Western allies would see Russia take a big step forward toward establishing a coveted overland road and rail link with Iran. Moreover, Armenia on its own lacks the capacity to prevent Russia and Azerbaijan from acting.

No former Russian ally has seen such a dramatic breakdown in its relations with Moscow as Armenia. The two countries have a long historical alliance built on their shared Christian religion. Russia was the traditional protector of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and Armenians who lived in the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union tended to enjoy more upward social mobility than other non-Slavs: some of them reached the highest echelons of the Soviet elite.

But all that has changed over the past few years. Russian relations with Armenia began to cool off in 2018, when Armenias Velvet Revolution brought Pashinyan, a populist democrat, to power. That transition was barely tolerated in Moscow, which feared another color revolution bringing an unfriendly government to power on its border. After the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, Moscow continued to support the Armenians, but relations were increasingly strained. For Yerevan, Azerbaijans seizure of the territory last fall, with Russian acquiescence, became the last straw.

As the Kremlin failed to honor its security commitments to Armenia, Pashinyan began to move his country decisively toward the West. Last fall, he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and pushed Armenia to formally join the International Criminal Court, meaning that Putin, who has an ICC arrest warrant on his head, could theoretically be arrested if he sets foot in Armenia. And in February, Pashinyan also suspended Armenias participation in the Russian-led military alliance, the Collective Treaty Security Organization. Some European politicians have now mooted the idea of eventual EU membership for Armenia.

With Nagorno-Karabakh removed from the equation, Pashinyan is also pressing harder to reduce his countrys dependence on Russia. Armenia has asked Russia to remove the Russian border guards who have been stationed in Armenias Zvartnots airport since the 1990s by August 1. Other Russian border guards who are stationed on Armenias borders with Iran and Turkey will stay for now, but the deployment in 2023 of an EU civil monitoring mission in southern Armenia shows where the Armenian governments strategic preferences lie.

Ethnic Armenians fleeing to Armenia following Azerbaijan's seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh, September 2023

Armenias pivot to the West, however, comes at an extremely unfavorable moment. Flush with victory and benefiting from strong ties with both Russia and Turkey, Azerbaijan shows no signs of letting up its pressure on Armenia. Meanwhile, the other big regional powers around ArmeniaIran, Russia, and Turkeyare aware that the West is overextended. Despite their many differences, they have a common agenda, shared with Azerbaijan, to cut down the Wests strategic profile in the region and elevate their own. In April, for example, top U.S. and European officials in Brussels announced an economic aid package for Armenia. In response, Iran, Russia, and Turkey each issued almost identical statements deploring the Wests dangerous pursuit of geopolitical confrontation, by which they meant Western intervention in Armenia.

The new confrontation over Armenia is not just a matter of posturing. Pashinyans government has evidently concluded that its future lies with the West. Although this shift makes sense in the longer term, it carries many shorter-term risks. Armenia is overwhelmingly dependent on Russian energy and Russian trade: Moscow supplies 85 percent of its gas, 90 percent of its wheat, and all the fuel for its lone nuclear power plant, which provides one-third of Armenias electricity. And Armenias own economy is still heavily oriented toward the Russian market. These ties give Moscow enormous economic leverage; it could seek to bend the country to its will by sharply raising energy prices or curtailing Armenian trade.

Meanwhile, Armenian officials and experts fear even more direct military threats to the countrys sovereignty. One is that Azerbaijan, in coordination with Russia, has the military capacity to seize control of the Zangezur Corridor by force, if it chooses to, in a few hours. Another is that rogue domestic forces in Armenia, with foreign backing, could try to overthrow the Pashinyan government by violence or organized street protests in an effort to destabilize the country and allow a more pro-Russian government to take power.

These threats come in parallel to diplomacy. Azerbaijan continues to pursue bilateral talks with Armenia to reach a peace agreement to normalize relations between the two countries. Whether the two historic adversaries can avoid sliding back into war depends largely on the extent to which Western powers, despite their commitments in Ukraine, are prepared to invest political and financial resources to underwrite such a settlement.

As if the threat of a dangerously weakened Armenia and a new Russian-Iranian land corridor were not enough, the West also faces a growing challenge from Armenias neighbor Georgia. As Armenia tries to move West, the government of Georgia, a country that has enjoyed huge support from Europe and the United States since the end of the Cold War, is seemingly doing the opposite.

Post-Soviet Russia has a long history of meddling in post-Soviet Georgia, and most Georgians retain a deep antipathy to Moscow. In 2008, Georgia cut off diplomatic relations after Russian forces crossed the border and recognized the two breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent. A 2023 poll found that only 11 percent of Georgian respondents wanted to abandon European integration in favor of closer relations with Russia.

Nonetheless, the ruling Georgian Dream partyfounded and funded by Georgias richest businessman, Bidzina Ivanishvili, and in power since 2012is burning bridges with its Western partners. The most conspicuous feature of this shift, although not the only one, is the controversial foreign influence law, which seeks to limit and potentially criminalize the activities of any nongovernmental organization that receives more than 20 percent of its funding from abroadmeaning nearly all of them. The move sparked mass protests, especially from young people, who call it the Russian law because it mimics Moscows own 2012 foreign agents law and seems similarly designed to stifle civil society and remove checks on the arbitrary exercise of power. The law is also a slap in the face for the European Union, coming just months after Brussels formally offered Georgia candidate status and a path toward accession to the union.

Georgian Dreams first priority seems to be domestic: to consolidate its own power and eliminate opposition. The party is tightly focused on trying to winby whatever means possiblean unprecedented fourth term in office in Georgias October parliamentary elections. Still, the sharp anti-Western turn sends friendly messages to Russia. Another refrain of the ruling party is that it will not allow Georgia to become a second front in the war in Ukraine.

Just as the Azerbaijani leadership does, the men who run Georgia understand Moscow. Ivanishvili, who as Georgian Dreams kingmaker is the countrys effective ruler, made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s and learned to win in the ruthless business environment of that era; a coterie of people around him have made plenty of money from Russia since the Ukraine war began. Moreover, Georgia has opened its doors to Russian business and banking assets, and direct flights between the two countries have resumed. The Georgian elite seems prepared to pay the cost: one insider, former Prosecutor General Otar Partskhaladze, is now under U.S sanctions.

If the Georgian opposition manages to overcome its historic divisions and win this fallno easy taskGeorgias pro-European trajectory will resume. But much could happen before then. Perpetual crisis in Tbilisi now seems assured for the remainder of this year, if not beyond. Neither side will back down easily. The government has lost all credit with its Western partners, yet to call on Russia for assistance would be extremely dangerous. The uncertainty adds another wild card to any larger calculations about the strategic direction of the South Caucasus.

Putin recognizes the value of the South Caucasus to Russia, but since 2022, he has had little time for it. Moscow has no discernable institutional policy toward the region as a wholeor for other regions beyond Ukraine. The war has accentuated the habit of highly personalized decision-making by a leader in the Kremlin who seems uninterested in consultation or detailed analysis.

This has left the regions three countries with strikingly different approaches. Azerbaijans Aliyev, with his two-decade relationship with the Russian president, seems most comfortable with Putins way of doing business. He can also derive confidence from the strong personal and institutional support he gets from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In the case of Georgia, with which Russia has no diplomatic relations, there are no face-to-face meetings or structured talks. (If Georgias de facto leader, Ivanishvili, ever met Putin, it would have been in the 1990s long before either man was a big political player.) Once again, everything is highly informal and conducted by middlemen. Here, too, business stands at the heart of a mutually beneficial relationship. Paradoxically, the one country in the region that has long-standing formal and institutional links to RussiaArmeniais also keenest to break off the relationship.

All these variables make Russian behavior in the region, as elsewhere, highly unpredictable. Since Azerbaijans capture of Nagorno-Karabakh, speculation has mounted as to what could happen in Abkhazia, the breakaway territory bordering Russia in the northwest corner of Georgia that has been a zone of conflict since the 1990s. Could Russia move to annex it fully, thus securing a new naval base on the Black Sea? Oras some recent rumors have suggestedcould a deal similar to the one with Azerbaijan be in the offing, whereby Moscow allows Georgia to march into Abkhazia unopposed in return for Georgia renouncing its Euro-Atlantic ambitions? Either of these is theoretically possiblethough it is also quite likely that Putin prefers the status quo and will continue to focus on Ukraine.

At the same time, the most obvious benefit the South Caucasus countries have derived from the post-2022 situationa stronger economic relationship with Russiais unstable. Close trading ties to Russia give Moscow dangerous leverage, especially in the case of Armenia and Georgia, which have fewer resources and other places to turn for support. And if Western secondary sanctions on businesses that trade with Russia are tightened, that would put a squeeze on South Caucasian intermediaries.

Not everything is going Putins way. Russias military withdrawal from Azerbaijan is a sign of weakness. So, too, arguably, is Armenias pivot to the West and the Georgian publics mass resistance to what the opposition labels the Russian law. But if Russia looks weaker in the region, the West does not look stronger. There are significant pro-European social dynamics at work, but they face strong competition from political and economic forces that are pulling the South Caucasus in very different directions.

Last month, the Georgian government awarded the tender to develop a new deep-water port on the Black Sea at Anaklia to a controversial Chinese company. That project used to be managed by a U.S.-led consortium. In other words, Europe and the United States are competing for influence not just with Russia but also with other powers, as well. Nothing can be taken for granted in a region that is as volatile as it has ever been.

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Putin's Hidden Game in the South Caucasus - Foreign Affairs Magazine

As the Russian militarys slow advances in Ukraine continue, calls for talks to end the war have become commonsome made by well-regarded foreign-policy specialists. Their ideas are neither prudent nor persuasive, but they should be examined in good faith rather than dismissed as appeasement.

Those urging negotiations rightly note that U.S. assistance to Ukraine on the level of the latest tranchesome $61 billion for military, economic, and humanitarian purposeswill not continue forever. Sending Ukraine another hefty sum next year will prove an even tougher sell, even if Joe Biden remains president; and if Donald Trump wins, he may end support altogether.

Still, the most recent U.S. aid package, along with the military assistance from various European countries, will enable Ukraine to fight into the next yearnearly half as long as the war has now lasted. Given this wars twists and turns, the possibility that Kyiv could use it to rebound, while not certain, cannot be ruled out.

We can predict neither what that length of time will be nor the difference the newest batch of Western weaponry will make. Yet its important to keep in mind that it has now begun arriving, with the artillery and long-range version of the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) already in use.

Some claim that the best Ukraine can hope for is a deal that includes its partition. Even assuming this prognosis proves true, the nature and extent of a partition matters: There are worse and better variants. Ukraines ability to negotiate a postwar settlement that it can live with depends on its military performance over the next 18 months or so. In other words, negotiating from a position of strength matters.

Those proposing talks between Kyiv and Moscow tend to believe that Ukraine cannot possibly achieve anything resembling victory (such as regaining large tracts of territory now under Russian occupation); that the calendar favors Russia; and that Ukraines continued armed resistance will only produce more death, destruction, and territorial losses, which it can avert by reaching a settlementsoon. The war has taken an enormous toll, as I have seen firsthand during four visits to Ukraine, so the desire to end it is understandable.

Despite their good intentions, the negotiate now camp skirts a critical question: Who will (or should) initiate the talks? One possible answer: the United States, Ukraines principal supplier of weaponryperhaps even over Kyivs head. But theres virtually no chance of that happening so long as Biden remains president: Nothing he or members of his foreign-policy and national security teams have said or done suggests they plan to strong-arm Kyiv into a settlement with Moscow. The $42 billion in military assistancepart of the latest installment of American aidis meant to keep Ukraine in the fight and will, into 2025, even if Trump wins in November.

Perhaps those advocating negotiations expect that Kyiv will conclude that continuing to fight will produce an even worse outcome and, moved by that logic, seek a compromise with Moscow. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hasnt indicated the slightest inclination to take this stepnot since the failure of the talks held in Belarus and Turkey soon after the invasion.

His goal remains retaking all lands lost to Russia since 2014Crimea included. This objective isnt written in stone and could change if the facts on the ground do, but so far it has not. One can dismiss it as outlandish, but what matters is that it persists.

Maybe those who recommend negotiations anticipate that Ukrainians war weariness will impel Zelensky to bargain with Russia. Thats possible, but for now Ukraines citizenry opposes a deal with Moscow at least as much as its leaders doits common to be told by ordinary Ukrainians that Russian President Vladimir Putin cant be trusted to honor the terms of a settlement. As proof, many point to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which included a pledge by Russia, one of the signatories, to respect Ukraines borders.

I have repeatedly asked various Ukrainiansbartenders and hotel clerks, former and current officials, soldiers on the front lineswhether the war had produced privations that were so painful that they had concluded, reluctantly, that it was time for a settlement with Russia.

Not one person said yes. Indeed, the greater the firepower Putin directs at Ukraine, the greater Ukrainians hatred of Russia becomes, and with it their resolve to keep resisting. Yes, there is draft evasion in Ukrainesome of it owes to the monthslong but now-resolved uncertainty about future U.S. military aid and the Ukrainian militarys subsequent shortage of critical equipmentbut society at large isnt ready to throw in the towel.

The proponents of a deal with Putin seem confident that they can divine the wars denouement: a Russian victorysay control of Donbas, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhiaand Ukraines subordination. Yet such surefire assertions lack an evidentiary foundation. No one can be sure how this war will end, and forecasters should be humbler given that just about every prediction thus far has proved to be incorrect.

Consider some examples.

U.S. Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, anticipated some three weeks before the invasion that Putins army would capture Kyiv within 72 hoursonly to claim a year later that Russia had lost strategically, operationally, and tactically. Both claims missed the mark.

Early in the war, it was common to hear that Ukraine lacked the muscle to reclaim the areas the Russians had overrun by mid-2022. By years end, however, Ukrainian forces had expelled them from the north and northeast and in the south from the right bank of the Dnipro in Kherson province, regaining in all more than half the territory it had lost since the war began.

The failure of Ukraines summer-fall 2023 counteroffensive seemed to vindicate the prophets of doom, but Russias net gains last fall amounted to 188 square miles, just over half the land area of New York City.

Last October, a small band of Ukrainian marines forded the Dnipro River and created a bridgehead at Krynky, on its Russian-controlled bank, in Kherson province. The New York Times reported that one of them called the operation a suicide mission. The Times painted a pessimistic picture. Yet the Ukrainians expanded that foothold. Repeated Russian attempts to storm it failed and led to significant casualties and equipment losses and criticism from pro-war military bloggers in Russia. Two Russian generals were replacedone soon after the Ukrainians ensconced themselves in Krynky, the other, amid mounting losses, in mid-April. The Ukrainians did evacuate Krynky that month but dug in elsewhere on the rivers Russian-held left bank.

But wait, some might say: Ukraine has been in deep trouble since Russia, having captured Avdiivka this February, has continued pushing westwardand now threatens areas north and northeast of Kharkiv city. But these successes owe to Ukraines monthslong, dire shortage of equipmentabove all artillery. Russia had a 5:1 advantage in artillery shells by March, and Gen. Christopher Cavoli, head of U.S. European Command, warned the following month that the margin of Russias superiority could double in a matter of weeks.

That has happened in some places, and Ukrainian soldiers have struggled to hold their ground, let alone counterattack, especially because the Russians vastly outnumber them.

Yet there has been nothing resembling a collapse of Ukraines front line or large-scale Russian breakthroughs. The speculation that Russia might retake Kharkiv citywhich lies just over 30 miles from the Russian borderdoesnt take into account that Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city, encompasses 135 square miles. In the adjacent provincesBelgorod, Bryansk, and KurskRussia has amassed some 30,000 troops; but it would need a substantially larger force to control Kharkiv, which has a population of 1.4 million. Plus, urban warfare, a particularly bloody business, gives defenders all manner of advantages over attacking infantry.

The calls for peace talks have another defect. They enumerate the problems faced by Ukraines armed forcesthere are plenty to point tobut omit any mention of Russias, which I have discussed elsewhere.

Geolocated data show that Russa has lost nearly 16,000 pieces of equipment, including more than 3,000 tanks as well as over 5,000 armored personnel carriers, armored fighting vehicles, and infantry fighting vehicles. Plus, a third of its Black Sea Fleets ships and submarines have been damaged or destroyed. Theres been much debate about casualty figures in this war. The U.K. Ministry of Defense reckons that Russias total is 465,000 dead and injured soldiers. Yet even if the true number is only one-third of that, Russias losses, against a far weaker adversary, have still been substantial.

Does it follow that Ukraine lacks serious problems and will surely win? No and no. It does mean, though, that confident, linear projections declaring that Russia has become a juggernaut and that Ukraine should therefore sue for peace soon are questionable.

A major flaw in the pro-negotiation camps reasoning is the proposed timing. Many proponents of peace talks want them to begin soon, some as early as this summerabout a month from now. But the United States and its European allies have just started delivering tens of billions of dollars worth of armaments to Ukraine and wont be finished by the beginning of fall. It would be foolish to rush into negotiations before seeing what difference the infusion of additional weaponry will make, whether Russias military can sustain its current tempo once Ukraine has more firepower, and how successful Ukraines draft proves to be.

If Ukraine, bolstered by additional troops and weaponry, claws back more territoryeven if the gains fall well short of Zelenskys ambitious aimsand Putin realizes that his army wont be able to make additional gains, Ukraine will have greater leverage than it does now to shape a political settlement.

Theres another problem with the calls for negotiations: They assume that Putin wants them. But does he? Russias defense budget increased by almost 70 percent this year. As a proportion of Russian GDP it will reach 6 percent, compared to 3.9 percent last year. Nearly a third of the federal budget will support defense spending, compared to 16 percent in 2023. These arent the actions of a leader eager to negotiate.

And nothing Putin has said suggests otherwise. Last December, at his customary year-end marathon news conference during which he fielded questions from the media and the Russian public, he stated that the mission of the special military operationMoscow has since begun to call it a warremained unchanged: Ukraines de-Nazification, demilitarization, and neutrality, meaning ending its quest to enter NATO.

In September 2022, following a bogus referendum, Putin announced that four Ukrainian provincesDonetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhiawere irrevocably part of the Russian Federation. That remains unfinished business; only Luhansk is more or less fully under Russian control.

Bearing in mind the hazards of prediction, and assuming that Zelenskys goals could prove unattainable, one can envision this war ending in at least one of three ways.

1. The Russian military takes even more land, the West succumbs to Ukraine fatigue, and Putin imposes a punitive peace on Kyiv: Parts of Ukraine become Russian territory, and the remainder, while retaining independence, reenters Moscows orbit.

2. Despite intense efforts, Russia controls less Ukrainian territory than it does now, Putin recognizes that his army cannot do any better and may lose more land, a political settlement follows, and Ukraine eventually joins the EU and NATO, with the proviso that Kyiv will not permit NATO bases or the permanent presence of foreign troops on its soil.

3. The war becomes a stalemate, which both adversaries conclude cannot be broken, but Putin has enough leverage to ensure Ukraines neutrality. Kyiv uses its own bargaining power to insist on armed neutrality, which would give it the freedom to train its armed forces in Western countries, equip its army with Western weaponry, and thus remain outside Russias sphere of influence.

While other scenarios are certainly possible, these, save the first, share a commonality: They require that Ukraine boost its bargaining power by ending Russias momentum, mounting its own counteroffensive, and retaking more territory.

This will require time, which Ukraine now has: Western arms have just started reaching the front, and their volume will increase in the coming months. Russia and Ukraine may eventually hold talks on a political settlement. But now is not the time to initiate them.

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Russia-Ukraine War: Negotiating With Putin Now Is a Mistake - Foreign Policy

BUDAPESTHungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn has come to be known as President Vladimir Putins Trojan horse inside the European Union. He is the continents biggest hater of the U.S. Democratic Party, referring to liberals as his enemies, and he was the only European leader who congratulated Putin on his record fifth inauguration this month. The signs are growing that Orbn is following Putins path deeper and deeper into an autocracy that could shake up Europe.

In Budapest, there is an unmistakable authoritarian atmosphere. As someone who lived in Russia through most of Putins reign, the memories evoked include that of Nashi, the Kremlins far-right youth propaganda movement. Billboards across the city show the faces of Orbns opponents covered by huge dollar signs and accompanied by slogans that read: They sold themselves by the thousands. We saw many similar signs in Moscow starting around 2011 when Putin began a crackdown on the opposition that would entrench him in power and ultimately lead to the disastrous invasion of Ukraine.

Its not just Putin inspiring Orbn. He welcomed President Xi Jinping to Budapest this month and declared China to be one of the pillars of the new world order. If China is dreaming of a 21st century dominated by autocrats not democrats, then Orbn wants to get on board. Xis appearance in Hungary underlined the growing strategic partnership between the nations who announced a host of new economic, diplomatic, and business agreements. Putin was in Beijing this month to make a host of similar pronouncements himself.

Moscow is watching the destabilizing divisions within Europesome of which are stoked by Orbn in his role as a naysayer with a veto within the European Unionwith great interest. The newly appointed Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov highlighted recently that Russia does have allies in the West: There are elites and important social layers in the West, who are promoting traditional values; and Russia, perhaps, is their life raft, which will help them protect at least something.

Orbn, head of the right-wing Fidesz party, is clinging to that life raft and Russia makes him work for its support; whether its blocking European aid for Ukraine, vetoing an EU plan to use frozen Russian assets, or speaking out against the European consensus on helping Ukraine win the war.

Even the other conservative parties see Orbn as selling out his country. The president of the Jobbik party, Marton Gyongyosi, told The Daily Beast: Orbn is selling his role as the Trojan horse in the EU to both Putin and Xi.

Orbn is benefitting from a growing number of deals with Russia and China. Gazprom recently stepped in to sponsor the countrys biggest soccer team, Russian loans have backed big state projects andin returnit has been reported that Hungary is now a safe haven in Europe for FSB spies.

Gyongyosi says Hungarians are already paying the price for Orbns great game: Nobody trusts us any longer, he explained. NATO is not sharing information with Orbn. Austria and Slovakia control their border with us. Hungarys universities lose grants, funds for scientific research, and a chance to take part in exchange programs available for other member states of the European Union.

As Orbn grows ever more isolated from Europe and the U.S. so he clings tighter to his authoritarian friends.

His cult of personality and iron grip on Hungary is coming to resemble that of an authoritarian leader. The most recent survey conducted by the Hungarian government claimed that more than 98 percent of Hungarians support Orbns vetoes against EU aid for Ukraine and believe that ceasefire and peace is needed for Ukraine, instead of weapons and bank transfers.

He has also created a bill protecting national sovereigntywhich looks as if it was dreamt up by Russias own banning-machinethat helps security services to go after anyone criticizing the government.

Orbn has now been in power for 14 years and easily won a landslide re-election in April 2022, just weeks after Putin sent troops to Ukraine.

Peter Kreko, one of the leading experts on Hungarian state disinformation, said Orbns domestic propaganda landscape was becoming eerily similar to Putins.

Orbn likes to enjoy all the benefits of EU membership, while politically capitalizing on the anti-EU rhetoric: George Soros and Brussels have become some kind of axiomatic enemies in governmental communication, the ultimate cause of all evil. Putins and Orbns anti-EU rhetoric is very similar, he told The Daily Beast. They both say that the EU is increasingly a puppet of the United Statesthe colonialization narrative grows widespread; they both say that this is a hotbed of the LGBTQ rainbow propaganda, and that the EU went too far from its original moral values; they espouse a trinity of values; nation, God, and family.

If you walk around Budapests Liberty Squarethe home of the U.S. Embassythere is a strange collection of monuments: to Ronald Reagan, to the Soviet liberation of Hungary in the World War II, and to Harry Hill Bandholts, a U.S. Army general who became famous in Hungary in 1919 when he refused to allow the Romanian military to steal Transylvanian treasures from the national museum. You will not find any monuments to the victims of homophobia. There is no memorial to the victims of autocrats, even though thousands of civilians were murdered under the rule of the fascist Arrow Cross Party in 1944-1945, and thousands more were later killed during 45 years of the Soviet occupation.

Propaganda billboards talk about Hungarys successful development under Orbns government; restaurants, cafes and galleries around the square are full of respectable-looking businesses. There is no reminder about the war raging in a neighboring countryHungary and Ukraine share a short, 84-mile border.

History goes in circles in Hungary. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, Orbns party Fidesz espoused strong anti-Russian views. Orbn practically reversed the thinking of his own voters, turned them increasingly pro-Russian, Kreko told The Daily Beast. If you ask Fidesz voters these days who they blame for the war, they first blame the U.S., second Ukraine, and Russia would be only third.

And yet it was within living memory that 1,000 Soviet tanks rolled along the streets of Budapest killing hundreds of civilians during a 12-day-long uprising against Stalinist rule. Soviet troops didnt leave Hungary until 1991.

One of the deadly tanks used in 1956 is now exhibited at the House of Terror Museum in the center of Budapest. Nobody explains to Hungarians at the House of Terror that Putin is bringing Stalinism backone day you are proud of the revolution of 1956 and then 70 years later you are with Russia, managed by the KGB, said Istvan Hegedus, once a leading member of the Fidesz party, who knew Orbn well.

Hegedus, who is now chairman of the Hungarian Europe Society think tank, left the party when he saw Orbn turning towards the right. Orbns behavior is irrational. He spreads anti-Soros propaganda, showing off his brutal methodshis doctrine is based on frustrating, he hates his own allies in the EU and blackmails them, he told The Daily Beast.

He explained that the war in Ukraine is helping Orbn persuade Hungarians to follow his plunge towards autocracy as he emulates Putin. The war is the problem. Promises of peace on the conditions dictated by Putin sound promising to many in Hungary. People say, We dont want to die. Hungarians have forgotten what happened under Stalinism.

As the old saying goes: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

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How Viktor Orbn Emerged From the Shadows as the 'New Putin' - The Daily Beast